Steve Bannon to CNN's Fareed Zakaria: Economic nationalism doesn't care about race, ethnicity, religion. It doesn't care about gender, doesn't care about religion, it doesn't care what your sexual preference is. It cares about if you're a United States citizen.

The days of GOP betrayal, equivocation and incompetence have to end. A Jordan speakership would re-energize the base and give it reason to turn out in numbers in November. The alternative, a Nancy Pelosi Democrat-controlled Congress, would further thwart the Trump agenda, seek to impeach him, and set the stage for a Democrat presidential victory in 2020. Trump’s substantial achievements will be rolled back and it is doubtful our nation could survive another Obama-esque presidency.

Immigrants who need financial assistance should get it from their sponsors, churches, charities or relatives, not American taxpayers. We need E-verify not at workplaces, but in welfare offices. Immigrants who do go on welfare should have their visas suspended. Under the right conditions, it’s hard to imagine that millions of bright, hard working and freedom-seeking immigrants would not want to come to the United States. The most valuable asset in the world is a U.S. Passport and we should stop giving it away for free.

In late 2016 the Obama administration published an alarming study that showed upwards of 47 percent of American jobs might be eliminated due to the technological advances in robotics, automation and machine learning (RAML). The most vulnerable jobs included those filled by workers with lower pay, lower skills and less education. Democrats must accept that open borders are not fiscally sustainable and that tough choices must be made about whom and how many immigrants we embrace.

The intelligentsia of the Right and Left will continue to talk down Donald Trump and claim his remarks to CPAC just weren’t up to presidential standards. What they don’t understand is Trump’s stream of consciousness asides are exactly were he connects with the voters and what differentiates him from the inside-the-Beltway political class that voters despise.

Speaker Paul Ryan promised that no immigration reform bill would come before the House unless it was supported by a majority of House Republicans. If he breaks that promise almost 95% of conservatives responding to a recent FedUp PAC poll say that if Ryan breaks that promise he should be deposed as speaker and replaced by someone President Trump can trust.

We face a situation today in which non-citizens are treated as a protected class whom our elites seems to prefer over deplorable Americans. This was perhaps the seminal meta-narrative of the 2016 presidential election that resulted in Donald Trump. But have our betters learned anything?

Democrats who precipitated the shutdown love to cite statistics that show that 80 percent of Americans want to allow the Dreamers to stay — as no doubt any final resolution will allow. But they should worry that the longer the shutdown debate is focused on immigration, the more Americans will come to realize it’s about our underlying U.S. immigration policy — and Democrats are coming to realize just how shaky defending that ground might become.

More than 54% of conservatives responding to the FedUp PAC poll take the position that Trump “should continue to say the same thing in the same way about merit-based immigration.” Another 39% agree with Trump about the necessity of moving to merit-based immigration but say that he “should be more careful about the language he uses.”

President Trump ran for office arguing for a merit-based system that lets in the best and the brightest but turns away criminals — even if they do have a relative here. It’s a commonsense idea. After all, employers don’t roll dice when deciding who they want to hire. Our incredible military doesn’t draw straws when deciding whom to accept. But for some reason, when we’re picking new Americans — the future of this country — our government uses a randomized lottery system and chain migration.

Last week the headlines should have abounded with the year’s good news. Instead the headlines—and the cable news stories — abounded with a private remark made by our President — or perhaps not made by our President; he denies making it. I am not particularly disturbed by our passionate and earthy 45th President’s resort to salty language in discussing what kinds of immigration legislation are desirable for the United States. Though I think there are more important issues to discuss and even celebrate. As I have said, how about that economy!

It is much easier to point to President Trump's crude comments on immigration than it is to handle the truth, which is that his opponents want an argument rather than action. In an election year, immigration is far more powerful for Democrats as a political issue than it is as an accomplishment in the rearview mirror. They know this just as they have always known it, and so they're digging in their heels and throwing obstacles in the way of a solution.

Mass immigration means an America in 2050 with no core majority, made up of minorities of every race, color, religion and culture on earth, a continent-wide replica of the wonderful diversity we see today in the U.N. General Assembly. Such a country has never existed before. Are we on the Yellow Brick Road to the new Utopia — or on the path to national suicide?

If you read the Federalist Papers, you'll learn that among the top priorities of the founders was to ensure that the government, particularly any branch of government, not be too powerful. The Bill of Rights is all about constraining the power of government. The Constitution never once mentions the words "strength" or "strong." Neither does the Declaration of Independence. But both documents talk a great deal about freedom and liberty.

Trump’s “s***holes” objection is big news rather than the fact there are so-called political leaders who can’t agree to reorient our immigration policy toward taking people who can successfully assimilate here. Between the two, the crude man who tells the truth and looks out for his own citizens is preferable to the genteel man who sells us out for cheap labor or ballot-box fuel for a political machine. If Trump is the former, so be it.

Limbaugh: It was not about immigration. It was to counter the Wolff book. It was to get rid of it, it was to toss it aside, it was to rebut it. It was to nuke it. It was to dispel it. It was to render it meaningless and to have it seen for what it is: A pack of lies. Now, some people might say, “Gee, I don’t think that was good reason to do this. You don’t want to be defensive about it.” Well, I’m sure at the White House they’ll tell you this wasn’t a defensive move, that this was them on offense.

Donald Trump gets called crazy a lot. Or infantile. Or senile. More than a bit of projection may be operative in these allegations, however. Watching Tuesday's televised discussion of immigration with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders, which the president opened to the media, it was hard not to come to an opposite conclusion. Donald Trump was the real grownup in the room.

It is a decisive moment in the Trump presidency, and in the debate over immigration. Right now, it's fair to say nearly no one in the Washington press corps is paying much attention — they would much rather discuss Steve Bannon, or the 25th Amendment, or whether the president watches too much TV. But the coming weeks will be crucial for the agenda that won Donald Trump the White House.

The patterns of internal and immigrant migration of 2010-17 looks less like Barack Obama’s ideal America and more like Donald Trump’s. The flight from high-tax to low-tax states, diminished by higher-skill immigration, the fracking boom in North Dakota, and the decline in hip Vermont: You might even say Trump started winning even when Obama was still in office.